In the manufacture of garments, it is customary to spread sheets or plies of material in long lengths and in several vertically stacked layers on long cutting tables, to spread a long sheet of pattern paper over the top of the stacked layers of material, and to cut through the stacked material with a band saw cutter or other cutting tool. The spreading of the material on the long cutting tables requires a substantial amount of time, and the cutting table occupies a large floor space in the cutting room. The worker usually spreads out the long paper pattern on the bare cutting table and marks the splice locations indicated on the paper pattern directly on the edge of the cutting table, and then rolls up his paper pattern. The fabric is then usually received in a large roll, the roll is mounted on a moving spindle, and the spindle is then moved up and down the length of the cutting table to pay out the material onto the cutting table. When the worker gets to the far end of the table he reverses the process and spreads the material in the opposite direction. After many layers of material have been spread in this manner, usually 36 or 48 layers, the worker then respreads the paper pattern on top of the vertically stacked layers of material and begins the cutting process.
While a large number of layers of material can be cut with this procedure, the accuracy of the cut made by the operator decreases as the stacked material increases in height. Moreover, the pattern pieces cannot intersect with band saw cutting since the typical band saw cutting techniques usually fail on a "tangential" cut. Furthermore, the operator can usually cut the larger pattern pieces with the amount of accuracy desired, but the smaller pattern pieces, such as cuffs and collars, usually cannot be cut with the desired degree of accuracy, since accuracy in these smaller pieces is more critical. Thus, the operator usually cuts the outside of the pattern marking for the smaller garment parts and these parts are subsequently moved to a die cutter or "clicker" where the large stack of pattern parts are subdivided into smaller stacks and cut with a die. Even with a die cut the accuracy of the cut made in the fabric is not always acceptable, and the overcutting at the cutting table and subsequent die cutting procedure results in a substantial amount of wasted material.
Water jet cutting and other recently developed cutting techniques are now available and capable of cutting cloth material with more accuracy than the previously known band saw cutting and other prior art techniques. For example, water jet cutting can make better tangential cuts than band saw cutting, and the smaller garment parts such as collars and cuffs can be more accurately and more expediently cut. One of the problems with water jet cutting and other newer cutting techniques is that some of the new systems are not adaptable to the long cutting table, where the cutting instrument is required to be moved long distances with respect to the stack of material.